This present invention relates to three-dimensional imaging. In particular, three-dimensional ultrasound imaging of a large or elongated region of a patient is provided.
Commercially available ultrasound systems perform three-dimensional (3D) and four-dimensional (4D) volumetric imaging. Using a volumetric imaging transducer, such as a multidimensional array or a wobbler transducer, ultrasound energy is transmitted and received along scan lines within a volume region or a region that is more than a two-dimensional plane within the patient. For some applications, the transducer geometry limits scanning to only a portion of the desired volume. For extended objects such as the liver or a fetus, the transducer scans only a section of the anatomical feature.
Other 3D and 4D ultrasound systems use one-dimensional transducers to scan in a given plane. The transducer is translated or moved to various positions, resulting in a stack of planes with different relative spatial relationships representing a volume region of the patient. However, the relative position information and associated alignment of data may be inaccurate as compared to scans using multi-dimensional or wobbler transducers.